The Cloud is For More Than Just Hiding Your Porn Stash

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Ask most consumers to explain the cloud and they’ll tell you about online storage. And while this is a semi-accurate description of the cloud, there is so much more to cloud computing than just a 21st century way of keeping your mom from finding your porn stash.

The cloud is still a mystery to many people even today. They see it as some nebulous concept that only techies should have to worry about understanding. As long your stuff is safe, who cares how the wall was built around it, right?

Only problem is, if you don’t understand cloud services, you won’t get the most out of them. This is especially true if you’re a business person or an entrepreneur. There is so much more you could do with cloud computing. Here are a few things.

1. Wait, What is Cloud Computing Then?

Cloud computing has actually been around almost as long as the internet. What’s brought it to the general public is accessibility and a lower price point when it comes to server technology. Accessibility and a lower price point recently brought cloud computing to businesses and the general public.

The official definition of the cloud is this: “cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

Make sense? I thought not.

Essentially, the cloud is a collaboration between different network technologies and companies and online software.

An easy way to understand this is by looking at Adobe Premiere Pro. This is video-editing-as-a-service. The new model Adobe spans across multiple devices, automatically backs up your work to online servers, and constantly updates. No need to buy a new software suite every few years.

What we’ll focus on here is business I.T. services on the cloud. These could be useful for anyone running a business or a website.

2. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

Data is gold in today’s economy. Massive corporations have experienced irreparable damage because their data was compromised. You may not hold millions of social security numbers and tons of personal financial data, but you might harbor more important data than you know.

This is where DRaaS comes in. This replaces the need for typical onsite data backups. No pesky onsite network storage.

It’s typically subscription based. It can automatically detect new data on your site and migrate it to the cloud.

Often, when you sign up for DRaaS, you will agree to a Recovery Point Objective and a Recovery Time Objective. These indicate how much time until you recover your data (RPO) and how long until everything is fully up and running (RTO). If you’re running a dinosaur park, you might want these to be super short.

3. Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Would you like to get rid of the bulky box near your desk? If you own a decent sized business, the hardware required to support each employee can run up costs monumentally. You have to take into consideration upgrades, network costs, I.T., physical storage, etc.

Desktop as a Service eliminates almost all hardware concerns apart from keyboard, mouse, monitor and a network box. Just like DRaaS there is no need for onsite network storage.

It might be weird to get used to having nothing for your I.T. department to mess with. Trust me, their lives will get a lot easier when they no longer have to constantly update 20 local machines. Instead, they might spend a bit of time with customer service.

When your employees log on, they will forget they’re working on a virtual desktop. Everything will be the same. An operating system, files, applications, etc. They’ll just be in the cloud instead of on a physical machine.

Several DaaS services offer Windows as their O.S. If your employees are used to using Windows, they won’t have to learn a whole new O.S.

The service takes care of security and backups. This resolves a billion headaches for any I.T. department. Free up time, space, and resources. All these can be used toward your goals rather than for your I.T. implementation.

4. Identity as a Service (IaaS)

After watching Mr. Robot for the first time, I fancied myself a hacker for a time. I started exploring the network of my place of employment looking for weaknesses. I found a ton.

I was able to worm my way into more place than I should have. I eventually went to the I.T. guy and showed him all the passwords and secure information I was able to access. He was grateful.

But it’s difficult to scale this kind of thing. Keeping straight who has access to what and restricting certain levels of employment can be difficult for any one-man I.T. department. Save them a headache and subscribe to Identity as a Service.

Once you go IDaaS, you won’t go back. Rapid deployment, reduced operational complexity all make for a better experience for both management and employees.

Take on extra security measures easily. Multi-factor authentication is one of the best ways to keep your data and access secure and you’ll finally be able to implement it.

While the service can take care of everything for you, you can customize access all you like.

Cloud is So Much More

As you can see, cloud computing is much more than Google Drive. It can free up resources, increase security, and expand your capabilities.

Cloud computing entirely changed how we interact with data and each other. It’s the precursor for many revolutions to come. What ways has cloud computing changed your business? Let us know in the comments below.

 

 

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